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Sen. Barack Obama has sparked a wave of excitement among Democrats by giving the party a fresh new face and a promise of a new kind of politics. But like his rivals, he's spending much of his time and energy in one of the headwaters of the old presidential politics: New Hampshire.

The Illinois Democrat is planning another trip to New Hampshire this weekend -- his third since announcing his candidacy Feb. 10. (He also has made four trips to Iowa.) And in the early states, he is struggling to graft his mass appeal onto a political system in which success is measured in endorsements from members of the 400-seat state House of Representatives, in personal phone calls to local Democratic leaders and in hours spent in supporters' living rooms.

While Obama is using elements of the traditional campaign, supporters and opponents alike say he's doing something new, devoting less energy to the care and feeding of local officials while he works harder to engage the state's population at large. His gamble is spurring a quiet debate over whether, even as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) pledges to campaign "the New Hampshire way," Obama can win his own way.

"What the campaign is about is trying not to go through the traditional routine," said Ned Helms, a former New Hampshire state Democratic Party chairman who backs Obama even though, he said, he has not so much as shaken the candidate's hand. The campaign's approach to local officials, Helms said, is "an invitation for engagement rather than a courtship for endorsement."

Clinton, by contrast, has engaged in unabashed courtship and this week landed the support of Bill Shaheen, the husband of former governor Jeanne Shaheen and perhaps the state's best-wired politico. Clinton had called Shaheen immediately after his favored candidate, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), announced he wasn't running, and subsequently met with him twice. Shaheen announced that Clinton had gone so far as to promise him a role in the Middle East peace process, a pronouncement the Clinton campaign gamely did not challenge -- though Shaheen himself later downplayed the commitment.

Obama, on the other hand, has demonstrated relative inattention to the obsequious details of New Hampshire politics. Over the weekend, for example, all five of his major rivals recorded video tributes to Kathy Sullivan, the departing chairwoman of the New Hampshire state Democratic Party. But not Obama.

"I'm sorry that I can't be there on this extraordinary day," said former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who called Sullivan an "amazing leader."

"You're certainly an inspiration to me," said Clinton.

Both the Obama campaign and a state party spokesman attributed the lack of a message from Obama to a miscommunication, and Obama later wrote Sullivan a letter that mixed praise for her and his own message.

"The elections this past November showed just how much people in New Hampshire and across America want a new kind of politics, one that replaces rank partisanship with honest conversation and constructive change. Your candidates and your organization were able to harness that energy and turn New Hampshire blue. But you and I know that the work is far from done," he wrote.

Sullivan herself laughed the oversight off in an interview.

But Obama is crafting a strategy based on pushing hard outside the typical bounds of New Hampshire's political insiders and the cozy house parties that make up the state's focus on retail politics. His newfound star power is drawing crowds numbering in the thousands across the country, and on his planned trip this weekend, he is mixing house parties with mass meetings on the subjects of the Iraq war and health care. A forum on the war, to be held in Keene, is expected to attract 2,000 people, an aide said.

Obama's supporters point to the surge of support for Howard Dean in 2004 and, more recently, to last year's election of insurgent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter to one of the state's two congressional seats as evidence that Obama can tap energy outside the traditional ranks of party activists.

"There are lessons from Howard Dean's and Carol Shea-Porter's campaigns that there are a lot of people who aren't traditional activists that want to get involved when they find a candidate they connect with, and that's been one of the phenomenons of Barack Obama," said Jim Demers, a longtime player in New Hampshire Democratic politics who is a senior adviser to Obama.

The difference between the campaigns is not, of course, a matter of absolutes. Obama continues to do house parties and release names of supporters to the local press. Clinton is a celebrity, too, and she conducts large meetings, and Edwards recently traveled to New Hampshire for a major policy address. Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson continue to work their friends among the state's activists.

The campaign, said Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki, "is about striking the balance between the excitement of large crowds at public rallies and bringing together small groups in places like Portsmouth, Concord and Derry, so Obama can have those key one-on-one conversations about his commitment to changing the way we do business in Washington."